Routes of Remembrance: Refashioning the Slave Trade in GhanaOver the past fifteen years, visitors from the African diaspora have flocked to Cape Coast and Elmina, two towns in Ghana whose chief tourist attractions are the castles and dungeons where slaves were imprisoned before embarking for the New World. This desire to commemorate the Middle Passage contrasts sharply with the silence that normally cloaks the subject within Ghana. Why do Ghanaians suppress the history of enslavement? And why is this history expressed so differently on the other side of the Atlantic? Routes of Remembrance tackles these questions by analyzing the slave trade’s absence from public versions of coastal Ghanaian family and community histories, its troubled presentation in the country’s classrooms and nationalist narratives, and its elaboration by the transnational tourism industry. Bayo Holsey discovers that in the past, African involvement in the slave trade was used by Europeans to denigrate local residents, and this stigma continues to shape the way Ghanaians imagine their historical past. Today, however, due to international attention and the curiosity of young Ghanaians, the slave trade has at last entered the public sphere, transforming it from a stigmatizing history to one that holds the potential to contest global inequalities. Holsey’s study will be crucial to anyone involved in the global debate over how the slave trade endures in history and in memory. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
PART I SEQUESTERING THE SLAVE TRADE | 25 |
Making Family Region Nation | 27 |
Sequestering Slavery Recalling Kin | 62 |
Imagined Geographies of Enslavement | 81 |
Fashioning Coastal Identity | 103 |
Schooling and National Identity | 122 |
PART II CENTERING THE SLAVE TRADE | 149 |
6 Slavery and the Making of Black Atlantic History | 151 |
7 Navigating New Histories | 196 |
Conclusion | 233 |
Notes | 239 |
| 247 | |
| 263 | |
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Accra African Americans African diaspora Akweesi ancestors argues Asante Atlantic slave trade Atlantic trade attempt Auntie became black Atlantic British Cape Coast Castle celebration century chapter Coast and Elmina coastal elites coastal residents colonial Comaroff construction contemporary context continued contrast critique culture demonstrates descendants of slaves describes diaspora tourism discourses discuss domestic slavery Dutch economic Elmina Castle Emancipation Day enslavement fact Fante Ghana Ghanaian Ghanaian visitors global Gold Coast identity incorporation individuals Kwame Kwame Nkrumah memory Miss Mensah museum nationalist Nkrumah North northerners notes PANAFEST past political postcolonial present protest narrative racism raiding regional relationships result romantic Sarbah Save Elmina sequestering shrine significance slave ancestry slave dungeons slave raiders social society status stigmatization story stress suggests textbook tion tour guides tourists town transatlantic slave trade University Press wealth West Africa women Yaa Asantewaa